Long Reining Tips

Long reining is one process you can never do too much of!  I always long rein off the halter to start with and I don’t long rein until the horse lunges well! The horse must lunge at the walk, trot, canter through voice commands, change ways, and halt before starting on the long reins. 

Once it’s time to start I always start them on a lunge circle until they understand the walk, trot and canter queues. After this I start to teach them to back very lightly through the hands. 

After getting all the main queues into the horse I take them out of the yard and pretty much do everything! Over poles, through bush, down the road, around the house, trail walks, through the dam and river, over the obstacle course etc 

Once I feel the horse is 100% capable and confident at doing everything without hesitation I put the bridle on and let them adjust to it just being lunged around and once it’s all good I repeat everything I did in the halter with the bit in. 

I’ll usually spend at least 2 weeks long reining and then I actually come back to it once I’ve backed the horse. Following this process I’ve produced some lovely soft horses that have an understanding of pressure and commands. Removing the stress and potential confusion of breaking.

It’s all about setting the horse up to succeed!